Background

Giuseppe Verdi set aside his project of adapting King Lear – never to be completed – to create the opera that would eventually become Un ballo in maschera. He selected a pre-existing libretto by Eugène Scribe (originally created for French composer Daniel Auber) on the story of the reformist Swedish king Gustav III, who was assassinated at a masked ball in 1792. The subject was not at all to the taste of the notoriously prickly censors in Naples, who in addition to wanting the setting and period changed demanded that the murder take place offstage. Verdi angrily refused, and sought another theatre to stage the work. The considerably more liberal Teatro Apollo in Rome still insisted a fictional setting be used; Verdi had little choice but to relent, and transformed King Gustav into Riccardo, governor of Boston. The opera was first performed on 17 February 1859 and was an immediate success.

Verdi's music for Un ballo in maschera is some of his most sophisticated and subtle, marrying the opulence of French grand opera (a style he had refined in Les Vêpres siciliennes and Don Carlos) with innovative developments in Italian opera. German director Katharina Thoma (Ariadne auf Naxos, Glyndebourne) makes her Royal Opera debut with this new production.

On Wikipedia

Un ballo in maschera (A Masked Ball) is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi with text by Antonio Somma. However, Somma's libretto was itself based on the five act libretto which playwright Eugène Scribe had written for Daniel Auber's 1833 opera, Gustave III, ou Le bal masqué.Although it was to take over two years between the time of the commission and its premiere performance, that took place at the Teatro Apollo in Rome on 17 February 1859.Scribe wrote about the assassination in 1792 of King Gustav III of Sweden who was killed as the result of a political conspiracy against him. He was shot while attending a masked ball and died 13 days later of his wounds. In order to become the Un ballo in maschera which we know today, Verdi's opera (and his libretto) was forced to undergo a significant series of transformations, caused by a combination of censorship regulations in both Naples and Rome, as well as by the political situation in France in January 1858.

Pre-performance Talks

Join us in the Clore Studio Upstairs for an exciting introduction, which will ensure you get the most out of watching Un ballo in maschera.

These talks will be led by conductor and répétiteur Paul Wingfield, a member of The Royal Opera's Jette Parker Young Artists Programme 2012–14. In the 2014/15 Season he returns to The Royal Opera to join the music staff on La bohème and to work on projects with the Royal Opera House's Learning and Participation department.